Next we decided to visit a couple of National Parks on the Pacific coast. Firstly Marina Ballena. We drove to Uvita, a small town. Like we missed the turtles at Tortuguero National Park, we just missed the Humpback whales at Marina Ballena National Park.
The climate and environment changed very quickly as we lost altitude and headed for the coast. From cooler and green in the mountains, to dry and warm lower down, then wet and green and more humid at the coast.
We visited a wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation centre. They take rescued animals, and provide medical attention until hopefully they can release them back into the wild.
After a couple of days, we drove to the town of Puerto Jimenéz in the Southwest of Costa Rica. It’s the “base camp” for Corcovado National Park.
We decided to do a Kayak trip through the mangrove forest to the ocean.
The water in the bay here is very calm.
We stopped on a beach for a drink and to watch the sunset.
There was a “Supermoon” so it was quite bright. That made it hard to see the bio-luminescent plankton in the sea. It was like fireflies in the water. No photos unfortunately.
The next morning we took a guided hike in the Secondary forest (regrown after logging), and then the original, protected Primary forest. We saw (and heard!) lots of Howler monkeys.
We saw an amazing dragonfly with translucent wings with yellow circles on them. I failed to get a photo in flight and you can just see a touch of yellow on the folded wings. The effect of the yellow circles on see-through wings made it look like a helicopter or drone.
